Human Communication with Bots

[anotherone]

Currently, humans and bots have almost no way to work as a team. Maybe if the human typed something like "I am attacking Purple", the AI might find that it has enough men for an attack and say "I will join".

This would require some basic natural-language processing to recognize some simple statements.

I came up with a list of some statements that should be looked for:

"Can I have <NUMBER> <RESOURCE>?"

- The AI will check if it has at least 2*NUMBER, and then tribute it if it does

"Help me attack <PLAYER>?"

- AI will attack PLAYER if possible

"Help me!"

- AI will help defend the player's base

"Get off my land!"

- AI will stop building

Likewise, the AI could do the same and ask the human for help.

Please give me your feedback and insight into implementation of this feature.

Edited June 24, 2014 by anotherone

[3FFA]

Interesting, although you have to be really careful with the conditions you set for each command.

Can I have <Number> <Resource>? seems fine to me.

Help me attack <Player>? I think this is okay although I've seen the AI help me do this without me asking anyways( not necessary?).

Help me! sounds like an interesting idea but how would one have this work without bugs? I think this would take some really careful conditions, and even then it would bug out.

Get off my land! is not a command I really want in the game since it is hard to implement correctly and not very necessary.

AI talking to player I always like.

I would like to hear a dev's thoughts on this since only devs really know how well these specific commands would be able to be implemented.

Related: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18731

Edited June 24, 2014 by 3FFA

[agentx]

> "Can I have <NUMBER> <RESOURCE>?"

> "Help me attack <PLAYER>?"

> "Help me!"

> "Get off my land!"

That's a great start to define a human-bot communication protocol. I think implementation is step 2. If the protocol is well thought out all I need to know as a player is which bot understands which commands. This even may go a step further as RTS games all share a vocabulary with entries like: units, area, resources, buildings, time, etc.

I'm still looking for an idea to talk about a specific location. Coordinates, North-South all hardly work.

[leper]

I'm still looking for an idea to talk about a specific location. Coordinates, North-South all hardly work.

Something like the flare behaviour that's planned for the minimap? (See #57 and some old trac document that's probably outdated in most regards)

[av93]

Maybe, instead of a written message, you could communicate with bots using a menu like Aoe 3

[anotherone]

How would a bot recieve chat messages using the JS API? I know the bots can talk, but can they recieve messages yet? Something like

API.onTeamChatSent=function(str){/* code here */};

, maybe?

It should be a pretty simple addition to a bot if that is possible.

Maybe, instead of a written message, you could communicate with bots using a menu like Aoe 3

I suppose so, but this would require a little more code than the chat option (correct me if I'm wrong).

However, human team members might not see the requests then unless the menu also chats.

[agentx]

Leper, you mean a click on the minimap to indicate a position? Sounds great. And a bot let it blink/flare/star?

> communicate with bots using a menu like Aoe 3

What commands are offered there?

[leper]

A button on the minimap (I think there is an icon in SVN already) that you can click and that pings other players (maybe team only) and flashes a point on the minimap. The same command should be usable by the AI to both send and receive position based messages (though a chat message explaining why that signal was sent would be helpful). Shouldn't be to hard to implement IMO.

[Gallaecio]

A menu would be definitely better than a chat message. The AI could however answer "Go fsck yourself" and such by chat

[av93]

> communicate with bots using a menu like Aoe 3

What commands are offered there?

If I remember correctly, there was some messages that weren't working. The list was, send 1 kind of resources, train some kind of units (infantry, cav or art) and attack flare.

A menu would be definitely better than a chat message. The AI could however answer "Go fsck yourself" and such by chat

Also in AOE3 the Ai send messages

[iNcog]

YEAH LOL

that's so true in aoe3 the AI would trash talk you and stuff, was so funny. you'd get a treasure and they'd be like "haha @#&#036;%ing scrub you got a treasure? LUL i'll win the game", or you'd kill their army and they'd be like "@#&#036;% you lucky @#&#036;%". was actually really hilarious, though i'm not gonna lie the AI, even on expert, was so bad. I had a friend who once managed to 1v3 expert bots.

reminds me of a time where i tried to 1v5 some friends i knew irl. they were so bad I genuinely had a shot at winning. like, they were the kinds of players who would make some units here and there and some villagers here and there, whereas i was someone who actually knew how to macro. so I managed to kill like 2.5 of my friends (like 2 died and had to rebuild somewhere else and I severely hit another) but by that time the other two still managed to get enough units out to attack me. i held that off but was eventually whittled down and the 2 players i knocked out earlier on were slowly rebuilding and I had no way to actually kill them now. so I lost, but the game itself might have lasted an hour. they all made fun of me the next day at school but in all honesty those scrubs had to 1v5 me to win the game so my ego was still stoked.

good times. i miss high school

[anotherone]

Maybe, instead of a written message, you could communicate with bots using a menu like Aoe 3

If you have both human and AI teammates, a menu should send chat messages, too, so, for example, if the AI can' t send resources, the human could.